Sunday, August 12, 2012

How Much Crazier Can We Get?

Let me count the ways in which recent events have turned my brain to mush..

First we have a congressman who thinks it would have helped in that
Aurora
shooting if more patrons had had guns. Louie Gohmert, the Phi Beta Kappa
candidate who thought more guns would be a good idea -- reminds me of a
lost
gopher, no insult to rodents intended). Then, in a runoff election we
Texans got a nobody named Ted Cruz, a Tea Party candidate who will
possibly become the
other clueless senator from the Loon Star State. He reminds me of a snake -- no insult to reptiles intended. Moreover, if you can believe it,he's worse than the guy he ran against who
was, trust me, bad enough.

I'm drowning in a tidal wave of not-good news. Stop scratching your head
over the Romney-Ryan ticket long enough to consider what's going to happen to
our food if we are unfortunate enough to get saddled with these two come
November. Both are superbig on deregulation.

So consider this, especially if you love corn: you're about meet genetically
modified corn in a can. Or frozen. Or on the cob. If it isn't here already, it's
en route to a grocery shelf of the nearest Wal-Mart. Sure, some stores have
refused to carry this GMO stuff, but if you can't afford to shop at Whole Foods,
or there's no Trader Joe's in your neighborhood (although if it helps, General
Mills has promised not to incorporate the genetically engineered corn in its
products) what do you do? And why should you care?

Well, as reported in a clear and concise article by freelance writer Diane Petryk
Bloom, here's why: the corn is from Monsanto seeds, which produce a plant a
pesticide that will kill insects that feed on the plant. It's coming to
Wal-Mart from farms in the Midwest, Northwest, Southeast and Texas. Bloom is
among the most recent writers to cry 'foul' over this fact.

Bloom goes on to say that in addition to the toxin consumed by those who eat
this, there are serious farming issues as well. Just ask some of the small
farmers who have complained in court when pollen from Monsanto's corn crops
have cross-pollinated their heirloom corn. Monsanto has sued for theft, and
they such deep corporate profits the little guy doesn't stand a chance. And
those

Now that we are released from the 2012 Olympics, let's get to stuff that the
right-wing nuts hoped we'd forgotten about in the two weeks since the torch was
lit in London: and we fail to notice at our peril. Let's look first a California's
Proposition 37 -- which would require all products containing GMOs be labeled
as such. We'll know in November if the Golden State will set an important
precedent in this country.And guess who doesn't want that to happen?

So you eat crap that has poison designed into its DNA. Sure it kills bugs.
How can we know what it will do to humans down the line? A link between
sterility in rodents has already been linked to GMOs.Do you really want to find out what it might
do to your children, especially if you want grandchildren? And hey, where is
our great protector the FDA in all this? Anybody seen the FDA?

If we can't wait for the weather to cool down before we take to the streets,
we can at least write or email our members in Congress. Even if we know the
probable response; we can still worry the daylights out of them. We can write
letters to editors and company executives. We know they don't read their own mail,
but by God, unless their minions are complete cowards, they'll pass it on. They'll
know we're out here mad as hell and not willing to take this nonsense anymore.

Oh, and for your information, we watchdogs stateside aren't the only ones
who fear genetically engineered stuff -- Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia.
China and the European Union require the labeling California seeks. It's a sad,
sad day when China is more concerned about food toxicity than the good old U.S
of A. And one more thing: Monsanto isn't the only booger in this. The creatively titled Council for Biotechnology
Information lists among its members BASF;
DuPont, Switzerland-based Syngenta and Dow
AgroSciences (remember Dow, the wonderful people who brought us Agent Orange?).

And yes, as I read each new article and post each new clip on my
overburdened Facebook page, I wish anew for the feisty Molly Ivins voice,
although I'm inclined to believe that by now she, like so many of us, would be
shaking her head in something midway between horror and despair. In one of her
last columns she wondered how we became so mean, so senselessly violent, so
apathetic,so unwilling to care about
one another, so resistant to hearing any opinion other than our own.

By now she would have to asked how many deaths will be enough for Congress
to stand up and face down the insanity that allows automatic weapons into the
hands of anyone -- let alone those eligible for white coats and
institutionalization; how many travesties will we permit companies like Monsanto,
Dow et al to perpetrate upon us?

Finally, because this is too much of a downer to continue much longer, one
last thing: Remember when a symbol represented the person formerly known as
Prince? Well, according to news out of Ottawa, Canada, via the Huffington Post,
Canadian troops and police were trained for two years by the international
security contractor formerly known as Blackwater. And in the best Blackwater
tradition, it was done without the permission of the U.S. State Department.
This revelation appears in U.S. federal court records, unsealed in North
Carolina as part of a $7.5 million settlement of criminal charges against the
company now called Academi LLC.

Yeah. So lest anyone of us still wonder who's really running the country
look no further than Yertle the Turtle; Gohmert the gopher; the NRA; Monsanto, Blackwater/Academi
LLC and all those fanatics lacking a sense of irony who call themselves
pro-life but support capital punishment.

I'm taking off for a month, but I'll be back in time to vote. And I just
might find something cheerier to write about while I'm away.

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About Ellen Sweets

Ellen: Author, Food Freak

Before she adjourned to Austin to write "Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins," Ellen Sweets covered everything from fires, fights and homicides to to an eclectic range of topics that focused on food. She began her career at her father's black weekly newspaper, the St. Louis American and moved on to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, The Austin American-Statesman and Edible Austin and Texas Co-Op Power magazines. Her honors include the James Beard Foundation Award for best food section.